LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY OF SPANISH POLITICAL PARTY “VOX”

Abstract

The article analyzes the language ideology of Spanish far-right political party “Vox”. The documents containing the party program have been studied, and interviews and newspaper articles issued by 52 representatives of “Vox” in the Congress of Deputies and 3 representatives in the European Parliament in the period from December 2018 to November 2019 have been analyzed. The article concludes that “Vox” bases its language ideology on the supposition that the Spanish language in multilingual autonomous communities is endangered by the development of minority languages. According to “Vox”, Spanish should be the first language in administration and education on the whole territory of the country. Minority languages may remain in the educational system of the respective regions as optional subjects. The members of “Vox” dedicate a special attention to the question of integrity of the Catalan language. The party considers Valencian and Balearic as independent languages and not as varieties of Catalan. The party supports movements aimed at the linguistic separatism of Valencia and the Balearic Islands from Catalonia.